Uk politics

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

What next for Andrew Mitchell?

Toby Rowland didn’t have the ‘wit, imagination or inclination’ to invent the account he produced of Andrew Mitchell calling police officers ‘plebs’ at the gates of Downing Street. In any other circumstances that description would be rather devastating, but today it must have sounded rather sweet for the police officer when Mr Justice Mitting uttered those words as he ruled that Andrew Mitchell probably ‘did speak the words alleged or something so close to them as to amount to the same including the politically toxic word “pleb”.’ Mitchell has lost his libel case against News Group Newspapers and must pay £300,000 in costs. The former chief whip said outside the

Steerpike

Theresa May pulls out all the stops at the Spectator Parliamentarian awards

If ever there was a tell-tale sign of who won the Great War between the Speaker and the Clerk of the Commons, it was today’s Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year awards. Sir Robert Rogers picked up the top prize, declaring: ‘Common sense and good governance will prevail before very long’. Mr Speaker failed to show up. The guest of honour, Home Secretary Theresa May, delivered her own comedy turn making jokes about George Osborne’s haircut. She had a point. Her barbed comment that her ‘special advisers had told her’ this would be a ‘good idea’ had a particular resonance given her starring role on the cover of this quarter’s edition of Spectator

Isabel Hardman

Net migration target fails as Cameron prepares to make more immigration pledges

We are still waiting for David Cameron’s immigration speech, expected ‘this week’. The Conservatives tried to get their apology in early for failing to meet their target to get net migration into the ‘tens of thousands’, with a series of interventions starting this summer in which top Cabinet ministers started to highlight the problems with having a target when you can’t control EU migration, ahead of today’s figures showing that the target is an ex-target, or a ‘comment’, as Theresa May tried to pass it off as recently. Fraser looks at why missing that target is a good thing for this country in his post here. But it is bad

James Forsyth

Will the Smith Commission proposals help or destroy the UK?

The phrase ‘Britain will never be the same again’ is overused. But today its use is justified. The Smith Commission proposals on further devolution for Scotland are a huge step towards a federal United Kingdom. All income tax, with the exception of the personal allowance, will be devolved to Scotland—so north of the border there could be different bands and rates. With more devolution to Scotland, the West Lothian question becomes more acute. So, David Cameron has been quick to stress this morning that he will bring forward his proposals on English votes for English laws before Christmas. The fundamental question is whether this move to federalism will save or

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Tory detox mission continues as Liz Truss speaks softly to ‘Green Blob’

One of the major themes of this year’s big Tory reshuffle was the attempt to detoxify certain policy areas where a minister was involved in a stand-off with certain groups the Tory party would quite like to vote for them. Michael Gove lost his job as Education Secretary for this reason, and so too did Nick Boles find himself being moved from Planning to Skills. Owen Paterson’s departure was a bit more complicated: his aide warned in the days before the reshuffle that to move the Environment Secretary would be to leave 12 million voters in the countryside without a voice, but he was in the midst of pretty high

Isabel Hardman

Will Cameron talk to his MPs before his ‘game-changer’ immigration speech?

We still don’t know when David Cameron’s long-awaited ‘game-changer’ speech on immigration will be. Downing Street is only saying that it will be ‘before Christmas’, but it is still expected to be this week. Nick Clegg certainly thinks it is soon, as he’s been putting his own thoughts about today, saying he’ll support benefit curbs for migrants but not changes to freedom of movement. Some Tory MPs also think they should engage the Prime Minister in a spot of last minute lobbying, with varying levels of success. The Europhiles represented by European Mainstream have asked to meet David Cameron this week to put their views across but have been told

Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Ukip’s Mark Reckless begins his battle to hold his seat with local question

‘Oooooh!’ shouted MPs when Mark Reckless got to his feet today at Prime Minister’s Questions for his first chance as a Ukipper to grill David Cameron. The newly-re-elected MP had looked rather nervous for most of the session as he bobbed up and down trying to get the Speaker’s attention, but he probably didn’t need to be so anxious given Bercow is normally very happy to call new MPs, especially ones the Prime Minister doesn’t like. When his chance came, he asked the following question: ‘I’m grateful to the Prime Minister for spending so much time in Rochester and Strood. Dr Philip Barnes, acting chief executive of Medway Hospital, said

Steerpike

Another gong for May

What a busy week for Theresa May as she picked up a gong for Politician of the Year at the Political Studies Association awards at Church House last night. The BBC’s Nick Robinson was in full sycophant mode as he presented the Home Secretary’s prize, laying it on thick for his academic hosts, thanking them for allowing the media ‘to make your wisdom, our wisdom’. He couldn’t resist a crack at ‘Mother Theresa’ though, describing the voting process as a ‘non binding’ but ‘indicative vote’ much like the one on the European Arrest Warrant. No doubt Downing Street will enjoy Mrs May soaking up some more of the limelight. Other

Isabel Hardman

Ministers to unveil counter- terror laws

Today is the day ministers set out their new counter-terrorism legislation following Theresa May’s revelations on Monday about the number of thwarted terror attacks and yesterday’s publication of the ISC report into the murder of Lee Rigby. The new laws will include obligations for schools and universities to combat extremism but there is also a strong possibilities that internet companies will find legislation telling them what to do. Yesterday Facebook insisted it was taking tackling terrorism seriously but today Justice Minister Simon Hughes dropped a strong hint that these tech companies may find it set out for them quite clearly what the government considers to be a serious approach to

Alex Massie

The latest immigration madness: prove you love your wife (or husband)

Sometimes it is the small things that tell you everything you need to know about the madness afflicting British politics at present. Consider this small detail from the new immigration bill: All proposed marriages and civil partnerships involving a non-EEA national with limited or no immigration status in the UK are to be referred by registrars to the Home Office. This will give the Home Office more time and scope to identify and investigate suspected sham marriages and civil partnerships and to take effective enforcement action. Why does this matter? Because it alters the relationship between citizens and the state. Once upon a time the state presumed you were innocent

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Are Tristram Hunt’s plans for private schools a class war or just a bit pointless?

Tristram Hunt has managed to get a great deal of attention for his proposals for private schools helping out state schools, with even his own (private but sufficiently stuffed with Socialist children to be OK) alma mater getting rather annoyed at what it calls a ‘tasteless’ policy which espouses ‘what some might deem an offensive bigotry’. In summary, the Shadow Education Secretary wants to make the £700 million worth of tax breaks that the private sector enjoys conditional on the schools helping those in the state sector by sharing facilities, deploying teachers to help out with lessons, and making sure that they participate in the same leagues for sports, debating and other

Isabel Hardman

MPs to discuss legacy of Afghan conflict this week

Yesterday the final UK personnel left Kandahar airfield, with just a few hundred British defence workers left in Afghanistan to help train the country’s future officers. MPs have been assured that the country won’t end up the same way as Iraq, with the RAF returning to the skies above the country to combat Isis, but few of them are fully confident that these assurances will bear up. Defence Select Committee reports have cast further doubts on that and MPs have been pressing for a while to have a debate on the end of the conflict in the country. Yesterday Tory Julian Lewis received a nod from Defence Secretary Michael Fallon

Isabel Hardman

Can Iain Duncan Smith force Labour to continue his welfare reforms?

Iain Duncan Smith is taking the fight to Labour today, accusing them of being the ‘party of welfare’ with their ‘heads in the sand’ as he marks the next ‘roll-out’ of Universal Credit. Families will be able to receive the benefit for the first time from now on, with the ‘roll-out’ starting in the north-west of England. The Work and Pensions Secretary was typically tetchy when confronted with the suggestion on the Today programme that his flagship reform had been beset by problems, saying: ‘Would you rather us take a gamble? Throw everything at it at once? Have a problem like tax credits where nobody got their money and it was

Monday

Isabel Hardman

The fight for the soul of the Labour party

Fight! Two senior Labour MPs locked horns yesterday over the Scottish leadership contest. Ivan Lewis and Tom Watson scrapped after the latter wrote a piece endorsing left-leaning Neil Findlay for the leadership. Lewis tweeted shortly after Watson promoted his piece that ‘it’s essential that Scots decide best person to be leader of Scottish Labour. Others interfering not in the interests of the Labour Party’. Watson took this as it was clearly meant and dived straight in with a retort: ‘Presumably you’d rather they quietly elect your candidate whilst we all watch. Plus ça change.’ This is ostensibly a debate between the two men about rival candidates in the contest for

Alex Massie

The saga of Ed Miliband and White Van Man reveals a politics based on grievance and cowardice

Say this for the current state of British politics: it keeps finding new lows. A while back I made the mistake of suggesting voters might already have priced-in Ed Miliband’s shortcomings. The leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition might be a doofus but we know that and, if not exactly tickled by the thought, can cope with it. Reader, I think I may have been mistaken about that. Recent events suggest Miliband’s haplessness exists on a higher plane than anyone previously thought possible. One can only assume he secretly doesn’t want to win the next election. This, at any rate, seems the only sensible verdict to reach based upon the

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Will mainstream parties get the credit for turning up the volume on immigration?

David Cameron is set to give his big immigration speech this coming week, according to the Sunday Times, while James reports that Labour is to turn up the volume on the subject too. Both party leaderships are under pressure from their backbenches to take the Ukip threat seriously and give voters a clear sense that they would crack down on immigration. Both parties do need to deal with their legacies. Labour’s one has been much-picked-over and apologised for. But the Tories are also realising that they won’t have as much to boast about come the election as they’d hoped. That’s why Theresa May today finally moved from using weird words

James Forsyth

No breathing space for Miliband and Labour

This was meant to be the weekend when Ed Miliband got some ‘breathing space’, a chance to recover after the last torrid few weeks. But his—and his party’s—troubles are still all over the papers today. The Tories defeat in Rochester has not moved the spotlight on to Cameron and his difficulties in the way that Labour hoped it would.   Now, this is largely because of that Tweet. Emily Thornberry has succeed in uniting Miliband critics and loyalists alike in anger at her stupidity. But, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, many of Miliband’s longest standing political allies feel that the Labour machine has grossly mishandled the issue.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The politician who can fill a venue quicker than Kylie

What’s the most significant political story of the week, Ukip winning Rochester or Emily Thornberry’s resignation? Well, I suspect, it might be neither of them and that the really big event this week happened north of the border, Nicola Sturgeon being sworn in as First Minister. For the new SNP leader is riding a quite remarkable wave of popularity. Right now, she’s addressing a rally at the Glasgow Hydro, a 12,000 seat venue that she sold out faster than Kylie Minogue—what other politician in Britain could hope to do that?   As I say in the column this week, what makes Sturgeon’s popularity all the more remarkable is that she

Friday

Steerpike

Reckless gets a cross party welcome

On zero sleep and only seven hours after being re-elected, Mark Reckless was back in the Commons and sitting on the opposition benches. Rushing back to take part in a Labour PR stunt/debate on the NHS in order to shore up a Ukip weakspot, Reckless wasted no time in getting sworn back in. The Tory benches were deserted for his return, but he was given a grudging welcome back by MPs of all colours. ‘Listening to Reckless you would never think he had voted for the privatisation at the heart of the Health and Social Care Act 18 times’, mused Labour’s Bill Easterson. ‘First speech by Mark Reckless for UKIP

Isabel Hardman

Will there be more defections to Ukip?

Now that Ukip has bagged a seat that the Tories thought they could win, other would-be defectors may well be having a good long think about their chances. The fact that Mark Reckless only won Rochester with a 2,920 majority over the Conservatives may well lead wavering MPs to conclude that it isn’t safe to go over as their seats will be vulnerable once again in 2015. But then again they might conclude that all bets are off anyway, given Reckless wasn’t even supposed to win this seat. Michael Gove yesterday claimed he was 100% certain that there would be no more defections from his party to Nigel Farage’s tribe.